Partnership
by SpaceAnJL
Summary: In memory of Anne McCaffrey.  AU.


The blonde girl in the Courier Service uniform was really very pretty. Dr Leonard Hofstadter adjusted his suddenly tight collar, and surreptitiously wiped his hand on his pants leg before offering it.

"Um, hello..."

"Hi. Come on up."

There was plenty of room in the lift, but Howard contrived to edge up close, his own smile wide and little predatory. She gave him a slightly doubtful look.

"You are now aboard the PS One Seven Oh One." The pedantic voice came from over their heads, made the three men jump.

The blonde glared at the ceiling, and flicked her nails against the wall.

"Sweetie, be nice."

The voice stopped being flat and impersonal, and developed a distinctly annoyed twang.

"Penny, it is our job to provide a professional service."

"We talked about this. People skills..."

A small burst of static, which sounded suspiciously like a snort.

"Oh, very well. Gentlemen, welcome aboard. Please give your luggage to my mobile servitor units, and they will escort you to your cabins. We hope you enjoy your flight."

"Yeah, what he said." She tilted her head, and smiled brilliantly. "I'm Penny, and the talking tincan here is Sheldon."

"_Shel_don? Seriously?" Howard sniggered.

The temperature in the hallway dropped. Literally.

"I fail to see what is so amusing about my name."

"I think he was making a joke." Penny patted the nearest column. "You being what you are, and all."

"Ah, a pun, or a play on words." The air warmed again. "A little crude and obvious, but then, I _have_ seen the blueprints of Mr Wolowitz's engineering projects, so it's understandable."

Raj had just lost a brief tug of war with a small servo that was determined to wrest his case away from him. Another servo was already hoovering the lift, nudged at Leonard's boots to get him to move. Howard was staring around him in horror, as he realised that he'd just insulted the entity responsible for their safety for the next week.

00000000

Penny had the feeling that this was going to be a very long week. The one guy, Dr Hofstadter, didn't seem too bad, but the other two... well, one couldn't speak to her, and she just wished that the other one wouldn't.

Conversation over dinner had started off innocuous enough. But she had politely asked them about what science-y things they were doing at the convention, and two minutes into the explanation, just as she felt her brain glazing over, Sheldon had snapped and butted in. For all his attempts to be an impersonal machine, neither his intellect nor his ego would let him keep quiet. She'd ended up sneaking away to watch a holovid with a bottle of synthohol, left them arguing.

A servo nudged at her chair, and lifted a steaming mug of cocoa. Absently, she took it, murmured,

"Thank you, sweetie."

"You're welcome."

She thought back to her first meeting with Sheldon...

Penny had just scraped into the Academy, and she knew it. But it was a chance to travel, to see other worlds. And now, she had just been told that there were no more openings in the program that year. Another year of being stuck groundside, doing clerical work. She sniffled to herself in the darkness of the yard, wondered which bar she was going to hit first, to drown her sorrows.

"Do you require medical assistance? Do I need to contact security personnel?" The voice came suddenly from overhead, and she jumped, gave a little scream.

"Who's there?"

"I am the XS-1701." A soft whine of hydraulics, and the hiss of a door. "If you move to your right, you will find a doorway."

She had entered the lift. After all, it might be the only time she ever got to see inside a ship at this rate. At the entrance, an odd little servo had trundled up to her, rolled back and forth on it's treads like a puppy waiting for a walk, and she had followed it into the central control cabin. Found herself pouring out her woes to a disembodied voice, and a handful of little robots, who scurried around her bringing tea, and ferrying away the used paper tissues with alacrity.

And next morning, she had found herself called up to the office. She'd thought she was going to be bounced for trespass, and instead, a very bemused supervisor had told her that she had been assigned a ship.

She hadn't been too surprised to find out which one.

It shouldn't have worked. He was anal, annoying, obsessive and critical, she was disorganised, illogical, flighty. But they balanced each other out – he didn't need a co-pilot, he needed a friend.

"Why aren't you heading up some research station somewhere?" She'd asked him, once.

"...My psych profile indicated that I would not be a suitable candidate for an administrative position." Sheldon had admitted, stiffly. "Pseudoscientific nonsense."

(His Advocate had probably expressed it as well as anybody - "Better that he gets to annoy one person at a time, rather than a whole station.")

Penny wasn't intellectual, but she was practical, and she liked people. She was capable of charming and soothing where he had ruffled.

00000000

Leonard walked down the corridor, still shivering slightly, his hair damp from his aborted ablutions. Ahead of him, there was a sudden small shriek. A servo rolled backwards out of a door, with what looked like a pair of panties draped over its visual sensors. Penny stormed out after it, and grabbed the underwear back.

"I told you that I'm perfectly capable of clearing up after myself."

"But you manifestly don't."

"That doesn't mean you can send your creepy little shelbots in whenever you feel like it."

"Really, Penny, you know that I am required to record at all times, I don't understand the issue."

"At least there's an illusion of privacy, you bit-brain." Behind her, two other servos zipped out of the doorway, and made off down the hallway, clutching 'armfuls' of bright fabric. "Sheldon!"

"It's Laundry Night."

"Ooh." She stamped her foot. "You wait, mister. I'll paint your main cabin pink." She turned and caught sight of Leonard. "Oh, um, hi."

"Hello..." He shuffled a bit, managed a nervous smile. "I don't like to bother you, but, um, all the showers seem to be running cold."

"Really?" Penny, fresh from her own perfectly hot shower, sighed. "I'm sure Sheldon will get that sorted out. Won't you?" A hint of warning in her voice.

"Yes, Penny. Noted and logged for maintenance."

Sheldon withdrew his sensors as Penny settled for the night. Quietly, he checked his sleeping passengers, engaged the locks on the cabin doors. They were harmless, if annoying, and somewhat intellectually limited, but he was not going to let them roam about.

The last passenger to come on too strong had been found knocked out and strung up in the maintenance bay. With what looked suspiciously like treadmarks all over him. Oddly, nothing had been caught on camera.

He was her knight in duralloy armour, and she was his chaotic human heart.


End file.
